This is a very simple, and at the moment very rough, Emacs lisp package that can
assist your interaction with the Simplenote iPhone application and web
application developed by the Cloud Factory. Notice that simplenote.el is
not developed or endorsed by the Cloud Factory.
This package has been tested only under Emacs 23.1.1. Although I hope it works under older versions of Emacs (at least Emacs 22) I have not tested it. Furthermore, this is pre-alpha quality software and there is a high probability that it will cause irreparable harm to your notes. Use at your own peril and keep a backup of your notes.
The software is distributed under the GPL license version 2.
After downloading the package, put the file simplenote.el in a directory where
Emacs can find it during startup and then add in your .emacs the lines
(require 'simplenote)
(setq simplenote-email "email@company.com")
(setq simplenote-password "yourpassword")
where the email and password are the ones that you use to login to the
Simplenote application. simplenote.el keeps a local copy of your notes in a
directory defined in the variable simplenote-directory. Its default value is
~/.simplenote.
There are two usage modes for simplenote.el. It can be used as a browser for
your notes (with local caching) or you can synchronize individual notes to the
Simplenote application and later edit them on the iPhone. These two approaches
do not exclude one another. I will explain these two approaches below.
Give the command M-x simplenote-browse. If this the first time you will see an
almost empty buffer. Click on the [Sync] button to download your notes from
the Simplenote server. If you have not set the variables simplenote-email or
simplenote-password you will be asked interactively for their values.
The rest of the interface should be more or less clear. You have the option to
create new notes, and edit or delete existing notes. Syncing is not automatic
but has to be invoked manually either by clicking the [Sync] button at the top
of the Simplenote browser or by M-x simplenote-sync-notes.
Deleting a note just marks the note as deleted in order to give you the opportunity to undelete it if you change your mind. After syncing the note gets deleted from the local cache but still exists (marked as deleted) on the Simplenote server. The note will be permanently deleted only after syncing through the iPhone Simplenote application or by using the Simplenote API.
The idea here is that you have a text file that you want to edit on your iPhone
when you can't use your laptop for example during a bus commute. First, while
visiting the text file that you want to sync run M-x simplenote-create-note-from-buffer. This will create a new note on the
Simplenote server with the contents of your file. Each note is identified by a
key which is saved by simplenote.el in the buffer-local variable
simplenote-key. In order for the key to persist after you close the file you
must save it. For this reason the function simplenote-create-note-from-buffer
adds a file-local variables section at the end of your file. If your file
already has file-local variables you will need to do some editing.
Then you use the functions M-x simplenote-push-buffer and M-x simplenote-pull-buffer to send local changes to the server and get changes from
the server respectively.
- Improve the documentation.
- Clean up the code.
- Get rid of the need for a [Refresh] button.
- Handle gracefully the case where there is no connection to the Simplenote server.